Having noted that Francis Joseph : Emperor of Austria, King
of Hungary (Putnam's. 21s.) is the first book written in English to give a connected account of the career of that cold-blooded pedant who assisted in the fate-fraught, scattering of the heritage of Austria, and having commended the industry wherewith M. Eugene Bagger has gathered his facts, we cannot say much more. The writing of history need not be dull, but it does demand a certain dignity, and of that we find none in M. Bagger's pages. His style is alternately turgid, as witness " The petit bourgeois mounted the dunghill of his inhibitions and crowed for sadistic satisfaction " ; or crudely and clumsily Carlylean, like " Crowned martyr. Die like a man : refused to run away like a bank cashier. Blond beard. Still had it. No other in Mexico, Indians dark, no beards. Aztecs "—which is how the author elects to describe the last hours of the Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. At times he is sheerly hideous as "The Chief of the Vienna police, Weiss von Starkenfels, rose up one morning to find himself sacked. He may or may not have been surprised by the fact ; he must have been giddied by the motivation." We can almost hear Clio shrieking aloud.. _ * * * *
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